


The New World

by thestarsjustblinkforus



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: AU, Canon Era, M/M, Mind Reading, Prompt Fic, Second person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsjustblinkforus/pseuds/thestarsjustblinkforus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I am threadbare worn thin from wanting you and knowing nothing will come of it</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New World

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr prompt: 
> 
>   _AU where Enjolras is a mind-reader who learnt how to keep everyone out of his head, but then one day he’s tired and he let his guard off and Grantaire’s thoughts hit him and Enjolras blushes like an idiot because nobody never ever thought such nice and dirty things about him_

When you are tired, when you are weakened (and you  _can_  be weakened, you can be so weak you are ashamed of yourself) it is difficult to keep the thoughts out. They swirl about you constantly like smoke looking for ways  _in_ , seeking and probing with diaphanous fingers, with licking tongues, and though you have learned to construct walls, you have learned to fill in the chinks, it is a constant never ending battle to keep them  _up_ , to keep them in place, and sometimes the mortar does crumble, sometimes the smoke does slip  _in_. 

You have told no one of your affliction, of the trouble it brings you. You would not know what to say other than it has always been this way. The last time you spoke of it you had repeated your tutor’s nasty thoughts about your mother to prove that yes, you  _could_  hear them,  _monsieur,_  and do not  _think_ them quite so  _loudly_  if you please, and had received a crack across the mouth for your trouble. You lost a milk tooth prematurely that day and decided you would speak of it no more and you have not since, not even to those you keep closest.

And so they do not understand why you send them away. Why you ask them to go when you can barely stand, when your head swims with exhaustion and your heart is unbearably heavy. They can tell how much you need companionship, how much you desire comfort on nights like this, but you can not rebuild your walls, you can not reconstruct your barricades with a medley of concerns playing inside your head and so you beg them to go. And they do so because they know better by now. They know if they stayed  _you_  would go and the one thing you have been able to express to them is that being in this place where you have forged friendships, where you have conceived plans, debated, celebrated, wept and laughed with your brothers, your  _people_... the memories of these things, these echoes left behind and vibrating in the walls of the Musain with a gentle sort of hum, a low lovely murmur, bring you an amount of peace in times of trial and give you strength.

Even so, Combeferre especially does not like leaving you behind on bad nights. He can not be certain you will sleep (at least when he knows you have gone to your rooms he can pretend that you have), while Courfeyrac concerns himself with whether or not you will have eaten.  

You have  _not_  eaten. Not tonight.

But you have slept. 

You have lain your head down upon the table, you have felt the worn grooves beneath your cheek, registered the presence of something vaguely sticky and did not care because sometimes you do not get to decide whether or not you rest. Like so many things, more things than you wish, it is out of your control.

Like  _him..._

You have always been especially cautious around Grantaire. He says things that you are afraid to consider and you do not need his thoughts, which are undoubtedly even more strident than his  _words_ , infecting you in such an intimate way. You do not need his disdain, his relentless  _relentless_ cynicism spilling inside you, spreading like a stain. You do not need his  _opinions_  scattering like cockroaches in your brain and multiplying in the untended corners where you hide your own doubts, so you build your walls higher, firmer, when he is near. You add battlements, spikes, but you can still  _feel_  him thinking at you that you are a fool, that all of this will come to nothing and you can imagine well enough without ever hearing it what it would sound like, his thoughts, ringing in your head like a rusty bell, echoing against your skull and drowning out everything else...

You had argued with him this night, and though it has become a fairly regular occurrence, it is rare that discussions between you become as heated as this had been. Rarer still that you allow yourself to be goaded into shouting, but things have been different since the Barriere du Maine.  He saw you see him. He saw you not approach him, not say a word, only turn on your heel and go and never speak of it again. You could not look at him for a week so great was your disappointment, and ever since he has made it a point to be even more vocal about his misgivings. Instead of pulling attention with his usual absurdities, his normal antics that were at worst negligible irritations and at best an occasionally welcome respite, he has railed, he has cried out, he has pointed his finger sharply at your breast and then fallen into silences so sudden and deep as to be worrying. His eyes fix themselves upon you during these moments, his thoughts on the other side of your walls pressing harder and harder as though trying to sink into the stones, sink into  _you_  like a mist, and your throat aches, your eyes sting as they have done tonight.

He had left before the others, stormed out this evening as you discussed your plans for the funeral, shouting, “I will not come to yours!”

And you sent them away. You sent them all away, catching fleeting murmurs of  _he looks pale... he looks heartsick... how long is this to go on between them..._

And then you sat staring at the fire until it died, feeling the last of your defenses crumble into dust around you because you were alone and you could let them. The effort of trying to maintain them in the face of Grantaire’s anger had become too much after learning the news, and you felt yourself crumble as well, your shoulders melting towards the table like candle wax, your cheek finding that sticky patch and unable to move despite it.

You closed your eyes and you slept until you were gently awoken by a tendril of a thought brushing against your mind, a caress of a whisper deep inside your head...

_I am threadbare worn thin from wanting you and knowing nothing will come of it_

And you followed his voice, his voice soft and low and not a ringing bell at all...

_I want you every hour every minute every second of everyday_

You let it take you by the hand and lead you into waking...

_I want your eyes on me seeing what I see when I look at you seeing what I see and do not say That you are a wonder You are miraculous And I know I am truly lost when such words spoken with such conviction from such a mouth that would make the Masters weep for joy of it cannot move me the way you would have me moved I am lost and have been lost and will be lost but I would take your words I would take all that you are and hold it to myself take you into myself and have you fill the empty aching cracks and fissures in my soul that bleed ash and dust and bile I would breathe you I would drink you in an elixir for this for all of this for all of myself and I would be transformed from the wretched crouching creature that I am if I thought it would come to anything that I would come to anything But I will not and it will not..._

Your face is turned away so he does not see, does not know that you are awake. It would not matter if he knew. He would not stop thinking if he knew, and you would still hear him, you are still too tired to keep him out.... And you are not sure you want to so gentle is the lapping of his mind, his thoughts like waves rocking against you, into you, strange and warm and unlike anything you would have expected...

And you are not unaffected.

You are frozen in place, your cheek to the table, your hands hidden in your lap and clasped tightly together to stop yourself from reaching out to him...

Because he is in love with you.

Grantaire is in love with you.

And if you were to look deep into the recesses of your own heart you would not find yourself unmoved. Indeed, you would find a flicker there, a flame, but you can not tend to it, you can not let it conflagrate. Not now. 

Not yet.

_Enjolras Enjolras I would the world were peopled with Enjolras's and Combeferre's Courfeyrac's and Jolllly's Bahorel's and Bossuet's and Feuilly's and no Grantaire’s Not a one to rot the barrel infect the supply But there are too many of me and worse than I who will thwart you who will pull the wings from your body tear the tongue from your head They will silence you And I can not bear to see it I can not bear to see you silenced to hear your words no more when I hold them close like flickering candles to keep warm by I live by your light and I die by your silence_

Your lips part to form his name, but you can not speak it aloud, you can not...

_I would believe in the world again with you if I could I would believe in Man in God in the Future in the Happiness of the 20th Century you will give your life for but I can not I can not love the thing that will destroy you I can not believe in the future when the past sits so heavily upon me upon all of us but I believe that if the world could be saved it could be saved by you I believe in you Enjolras if nothing else nothing else_

You want to turn your head. You want to see him, to tell him you see him. To tell him you  _hear_  him, and that if you could you would _answer_...

_I would have you prove me wrong And I would prove you wrong I would show you the beauty in a kiss chaste if you choose I would show you the glory of love lusty and full to bursting if you would permit I would show why I still cling to life why we all still cling to life when death would be a balm a kindness a release_

Your heart is beating like a drum, beating to break free of your chest...

_My firebrand I want to be crushed by you consumed by you I want to know how your skin would feel beneath my hands, my mouth_

He washes over you

_I would have you in my hands, my mouth_

You drown yourself in his love

_I would have you arched and reaching for heaven but tethered to my mattress_

His lust

_I would have you want for yourself_

His hope

_I would have you want love_

His despair

_I would give you mine if I could offer without shame without knowing how disgustedly I would be turned away and I can not be turned away now I can not leave close as we are to falling close as you are to falling_

and you are falling, you are falling, your own thoughts tangling with his, meeting and kissing and sighing with his

_Do not fall Enjolras do not fall do not fall or if you do take me with you take me unworthy as I am I would go with you if you asked ask me and I would go but do not ask me to leave because I will at your word I will go and I do not want to go I do not want to be away from you Enjolras Enjolras do not go..._

He slips away like the ocean pulling back from the shore and your heart aches with the loss of him as he sinks into sleep, but only when you are certain he is gone do you lift your head.

You sit up slowly, you sit up and you see how he has tended to you while you slept, how he has moved the candle away so if it were to topple you would not be burned. You see how he has organized the haphazard piles of your papers, your plans he hates so much. He has hidden them in your books knowing if they were to be seen by the wrong eyes your  _funeral_  would come much sooner.

You stand slowly, arching you back to relieve yourself of stiffness and  _I would have you arched and reaching for heaven but tethered to my mattress..._

You blush, you blush as you tuck your books stuffed with your papers under your arm, everything gathered for you and tied with pieces of twine undoubtedly pulled from his pockets...

And a frayed ribbon you recognize from his hair, the faded thin olive colored ribbon that had been tying his hair back this very evening. 

And your jacket has been carefully draped over the back of your chair... returned from the table across the room where you had thrown it down like a child in the middle of the argument. 

Your cheeks flush now at your behavior, but you feel a pleasant warmth in your chest that he has retrieved it for you. It feels like an apology that he will never make with words.  

You go to him, to where he is sleeping in his chair, his head resting on his arm, face turned towards where you had been and you reach out, you touch a lock of his hair that has fallen across his forehead, the rest a dark tumble now against his shoulders. It is soft like a bird’s feather and you take your hand away, your heart thudding in your chest when he stirs.

But he does not awaken.

You take your jacket and you place it gently over him as the fire has long since died and you know it is very likely he will not rise again until well into the morning. You do not want him to be cold. 

You untie the ribbon from your book, watch it coil like a snake beside him on the table as you think to leave it for him as well and then decide you do not want to. You want to keep it.

You tuck it into your waistcoat beside your heart as you turn to go.

You will speak with him when this is all over. 

You will speak with him and you will say

_I as well_

You will say

_Teach me lead me show me all that you know let me be your student and I shall prove myself a fervent pupil_

You will promise

_When we clear away the barricades and face the new dawn I will take your hand in mine as we look upon it together_

_I would know love then_

_I would know it with you in the new world_


End file.
